I like a band-backed version of the Star-Spangled Banner, not any of that acapella, free-time crap they have guests for at baseball games. I also like the South African, Australian, and Scottish anthems.

I love the Irish national anthem, but not for objective reasons. Well, I mean, what anthems I like are not based on "objectivity" anyway, but I'm biased towords my own country's anthem in a way that is unfair, so I won't compare it against the others.

1+-year-bump. I think my favorite anthem is probably the Bangladeshi one, but some of my favorite songs to listen to (especially in winter) are former SSR anthems from countries along the Silk Road. Sometimes I like the current anthems as well, but sometimes I prefer the SSR ones. For example, I like the anthem of the Azerbaijan SSR much more than the current one.

Here's a video of that anthem, specifically the version used from 1978 to 1992, by which time Azerbaijan officially became independent. The lyrics can be found in Cyrillic script in the captions, but here, you can also find the lyrics in Latin script as well as a translation into English:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCT-8kW_Vrc

Last edited by vijayjohn on 2014-11-19, 22:33, edited 1 time in total.

Italian, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, maybe another, but these are all I can think of. Coincidentally, they are the anthems sung in the languages I find most beautiful. There is no particular order of these anthems I love so.

After Kazakhstan gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the tune of the Soviet anthem was kept, but the lyrics were changed. I am familiar with this post-Soviet anthem, which was used until 2006, and like it. However, in 2006, the national anthem was changed to "Менің Қазақстаным" (Meniñ Qazaqstanım "My Kazakhstan"). At first, I wasn't all that impressed by the tune, but years later, I heard a vocal version (I think it's the same one I'm including in this post); I like that version a lot more, and it's definitely helped me appreciate this new anthem, too.

Speaking of SSR anthems, I found a video of the anthem of the Turkmen SSR (with the recording I was looking for). Somewhat oddly, the lyrics in Roman script and a translation into English can both be found in the video, but the lyrics in Cyrillic script are not there. Oh well, at least there's this video, which has only the lyrics in Cyrillic script in the description:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVD6LgsvFZMI love both that and the current anthem of Turkmenistan (and the version of that anthem that was used just before it, which is only slightly different, really), which has a completely different tune. I think both of these anthems are supposed to be fairly unusual and reminiscent of Turkmen music as a whole. Here's a video of the current anthem with the lyrics in the official writing system for Turkmen, which is based on Latin script:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X1jf6Ix2yQA translation of the lyrics can be found alongside the original lyrics here.

"Death or Freedom" is the Chechen separatist anthem. All of the writing in the video is in Turkish, while the anthem itself is in Chechen. I'm not really sure how to translate the poem in the beginning, but I'm pretty sure it's a reference to Shamil Basayev. What comes after that is a proclamation that I've attempted to translate as follows:"Everything falls: a leader falls, a life falls, a flower falls, but a flag, a nation does not fall..."Then comes the national anthem, with the Turkish words for "Chechen National March" at the bottom of the video, and it ends with "May God the Exalted (I'm not sure whether this is the best way to translate Allahü teâlâ or not) be our supporter..."

vijayjohn wrote:"Death or Freedom" is the Chechen separatist anthem. All of the writing in the video is in Turkish, while the anthem itself is in Chechen. I'm not really sure how to translate the poem in the beginning, but I'm pretty sure it's a reference to Shamil Basayev.

Oh yeah, maybe. I find it kind of interesting that they chose to reference the leader of an independence movement that apparently had nothing to do with Chechnya and everything to do with Dagestan, which they invaded.

Earlier today, I thought of the national anthem of Uzbekistan for some weird reason, so I decided I might as well post it here. It has the same tune as the anthem of the Uzbek SSR (but different lyrics, of course), so I'm not going to bother with posting the SSR anthem this time. I actually like some of the other Central Asian anthems more, but I used to like this one a lot before I discovered those other ones:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5DxEnOtsdM

Just a few days ago, I discovered the anthem of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania (a.k.a. North Ossetia), which is in Russia (but the lyrics are in Ossetian). It was adopted by the local Parliament ten years ago. I kind of like it, actually! Here's a YouTube clip of that anthem; the video description has the lyrics in Ossetian along with an English translation:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX2uvxXChiM